Depression is a philosophical disposition, not merely sadness or a state of mind

Evidence

Depression is not sadness, not even a state of mind, it is a (neuro)philosophical (dis)position. Beyond Pop’s bipolar oscillation between evanescent thrill and frustrated hedonism, beyond Jagger’s Miltonian Mephistopheleanism, beyond Iggy’s negated carny, beyond Roxy’s lounge lizard reptilian melancholy, beyond the pleasure principle altogether, Joy Division were the most Schopenhauerian of rock groups, so much so that they barely belonged to rock at all. Since they had so thoroughly stripped out rock’s libidinal motor – it would be better to say that they were, libidinally as well as sonically, anti-rock. Or perhaps, as they thought, they were the truth of rock, rock divested of all illusions. (The depressive is always confident of one thing: that he is without illusions.) What makes Joy Division so Schopenhauerian is the disjunction between Curtis’s detachment and the urgency of the music, its implacable drive standing in for the dumb insatiability of the life-Will, the Beckettian ‘I must go on’ not experienced by the depressive as some redemptive positivity, but as the ultimate horror, the life-Will paradoxically assuming all the loathsome properties of the undead (whatever you do, you can’t extinguish it, it keeps coming back). — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 141

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The whole Schopenhauerian reading of depression as anti-rock, with the life-Will as loathsome undeadism, is dense, paradigm-level framing of depression itself.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s running hauntology thesis (lost futures, melancholia as art form) and to Freud’s beyond the pleasure principle, and echoes the depressive ontology developed across earlier chapters. — connects to: Objectless melancholia distinguishes depression from sadness in pop music — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 137; The depressive feels both overwhelmed by inner death and utterly evacuated — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 140; Depression’s danger lies in its claim to reveal final truth — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 139 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Depression differs from melancholy by lacking all relation and attachment #expands (0.90) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 115
• Melancholia is a conscious refusal to adjust while depression is accommodation to decline #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2289
• Depression is reframed as a failure of flexibility, an illness of disaffiliation #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 157
• Depression is a despecialization that ruptures the social bond #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 20
• Depressive ontology seduces because it is half true #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 144
• Despair often arises from logical conclusions about life. #corroborates (0.75) — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 93
• Liveable drudgery is more insidious than paralysing depression because it ends resistance #qualifies (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1826